I’ve been researching the following - hiring a string quartet would cost around £800 for a 2hr set, hiring a local ~300 seat venue would cost around £750. If tickets were sold for a flat rate of £20, this would make the total amount in sales ~£6000, and after the above costs were deducted this would leave ~£4450 for a single event. I currently possess a local instagram page with ~10,000 followers that live within my city so this would help with advertising, though I would still allocate money into other methods of marketing to ensure maximum reach to sell tickets.
On paper, arranging such an event doesn’t seem too difficult to do - is there something glaring I’m missing or is this potentially ‘easy’ money?
That’s not how you can sell 300 seats, There’s two ways you can do it one is the hard way and one is the easy way. Do you think you can sell 300 through your Instagram page?
300 people are not going to spend £20 to watch a cheap string quartet “concert”.
Google the musicians union and see what they actually cost, not what you want to pay. Then take your 6k (assuming you sell out) and subtract those wages, minus the marketing, minus the venue fee, minus the venue labor, minus the insurance, minus the royalties for whatever music they play.
Good luck